The loonies no longer have a loon on them? That’s a shame.
And when they do make a $5 coin, I hope they put a picture of an albatross on it, so it can be called a goonie.
Is this true? Anyone I’ve every talked to about it (admittedly a small sample) and the majority of posters in this thread seem to welcome the idea. Has there been a survey or something? Do you have a cite?
In virtually any other country this would be considered so petty. The democratically elected government is tasked with defending the country, protecting your civil rights, and upholding the Constitution. You/we do not have the “right” to insist on a paper denomination of money which is not even enough, now, to mail three letters, or purchase a single ticket on a big-city mass transit system. In any other country, even a democratically governed one, the government would be free to dictate in this area. We didn’t vote for dollar bills, or nickels, or pennies, or any of them…they were just there. We didn’t vote to have the coinage debased in 1964, it was just done. And we don’t have a constitutional right to insist that things continue the way they are forever.
Do you realize how screwed up and inflated the whole system of currency is in this country? Last time I remember actually using quarters…in a parking meter at UCLA…each quarter was worth 8 (eight) minutes in a parking meter. Before that I used two qwarters to pay for five minutes on a gas station air pump. That’s what a quarter is worth today…a puff of air. And it’s the highest denominated coin in regular circulation…the flagship, if you will, of United States coinage.
The Mint and vending machine industry did push the dollar coin. On the other hand, the Bureau of Printing and Engraving has successfully pushed to keep the dollar bill in production.
The zinc lobby upholds the continuation of the penny.
It’s my firm belief that if the Sacajawea dollars had been universally available–that is, if everyone who thought they were a great idea could have actually gotten them–we would still see them in circulation today. But they weren’t. Many banks didn’t have them. Armored transport companies didn’t want to make the necessary adjustments to handle them, which pretty much put the kibosh on the whole idea from the start. If Brinks wouldn’t transport them, how could they get to the banks? We Americans are an unbelievably conservative and hidebound lot; I still marvel at the Europe, which has undergone the ditching of a dozen national currencies in favor of the Euro.
The hell we don’t. This is heading back over to GD, but the elected officials are there to do whatever we bloody tell them to do, and if that is maintain an archaic system of money and measures, then so be it!
Wait a second. You’re running a business that consists of buying newly issued American currency at 40% above its face value and reselling it to people at 100% above its face value?
I’m imagining a coin collector with a million dollars to invest. So he buys 500,000 dollar coins.
Are these coins proofs, or produced in any other special way? How do they justify selling them at 40% over face value? And does anyone actually buy them from you at $2 each?
FYI, just to confirm what samclem said, if you go to the US Mint website, you can purchase a 250-count bag of golden dollars for $347 (or about $1.39 each). 25-count rolls are no longer available, but they were slightly more, at $35.50 per roll. So why do people buy the golden dollars from his store for two bucks? No idea, but it’s a nice business for him. On the other hand, if people stop buying them, he’ll be stuck with coins that are only really worth 72% of what he paid for them.
I believe the real reason why they never caught on is because companies didn’t manufacture things that would actually take $1 coins.
Aside from the stamp machines at the post office, I can’t seem to find anywhere to use them.
What I really want to do is to be able to use them to buy the $1.50 sodas in the vending machines, or to fit it into a parking meter that charges $25 for 4 minutes.
I think the best way to have made the transition is to eliminate the penny concurrent with widespread introduction of the Sac dollar. Restaurants wouldn’t need to get new 5-bin cash registers, coin sorters could be resized without having to be redesigned, etc.
A dollar bill? I can barely remember the one pound note in the UK, the last I remember having I lost on the way to the shops to run an errand for Mum, I replaced it with a coin of my own.
America did it once already. Although it took a lot longer to eliminate foreign currencies from circulation, it worked. As it did for Germany in the 19th century, and for India (I’ve seen a late 19th-century guide for businesses, about the various currencies in each major Indian city. My God, I prefer my tax return to that endless chain of fractions)
Plus the coin collector wants an uncirculated coin, and by definition, the ones you get from a Post Office vending machine (or a Las Vegas casino, for that matter) are circulated.
The OP is answered, and all’s right with the world.
I’ve been through these discussions before.
If you want to ramble on about the merits of coins vs. banknotes, or anything else, we have other fora.
Closed.
samclem GQ moderator